Current mood:	anxious
Current music:	A soothing chorus by Aroni

On dreams, awakenings and reconsiderations
After the fashion show had ended and I had returned to my quarters in the early morning hours, I finally could sleep without a nightmare. I did have a dream, though, and I am contemplating what it drives me to do as I write.

I dreamt, appropriately enough, of waking up. I was in a strange place I have never seen, a place full of harsh lights and an extremely uncomfortable table made of steel on which I was lying. Yet no headache, no sign of the punishment the gods inflict on us for too much indulgence with brivari was apparent. Instead, I felt wonderful, because there was a hand on my face, stroking me, and that hand belonged to my lost Adira. I captured it and kissed her fingertips, who felt warm, not cold as her cheek had done the last time I touched it.

"I missed you so much," I said.

"I know," she murmured. "But Londo, you have to wake up."

"But I am awake now," I protested, and she sighed, and suddenly she was lying next to me on that flat thing of steel and took me into her arms.

"No," she replied. "My poor darling. This is all wrong. You need to…"

This time, I did not let her finish. With the breathtaking lack of logic that applies to dreams, I asked her: "Why did he leave?"

She did not ask: "Who?" She did not say: "Well, that was your idea, wasn't it?" Instead, she answered with a question she had asked me before.

"Do you know what freedom means to a slave?"

"If he ever was a slave," I said, stung, "that was decades past. And frankly, I pity whoever would have owned him. Judging by the way he is now, he must have been a terror when young."

Adira sighed. "I meant you," she said, and the sadness in her voice took any anger I might have felt otherwise away from me. "Do not let them do this to you," she continued. "You must wake up, my love."

She kissed me on both eyes, and then she repeated: "Wake up now." And I did.

I might have assumed I was still sleeping, that this was yet another part of my dream, were it not for the chiming Babcom with its messages. First I read this week's question, which brought up everything I did not wish to face. Secondly, ever since that wretched magazine struck again, every busybody at home feels he can ignore earlier warnings and call me. This time, though, in a quite different tone. Proving once again that the gene pool, contrary to general assumption, has even after millennia of evolution not found a way to improve itself, those examples of primitive stupidity proceeded to congratulate me on my cunning. Apparently, the idea of an alliance with the Minbari and an army of leather-clad androids is quite popular in some quarters. Personally, I blame those Earth entertainment vids which have captured the galaxy like a wildfire. Certainly not even the least of our operas has such a ridiculous plot.

After the fifth call featuring a grinning imbecile, something in me snapped. Incidentally, the imbecile in question was not of Centauri origin; rather comfortingly, I got reminded of incompetence at the highest level in other races through being contacted by President Clark of Earth. With very little sophistication, he hinted that if I and Delenn had indeed stashed Sheridan away in some Centauri prison, one could talk about a revival of the old treaties between Earth, Centauri Prime and Minbar respectively. When people start to believe their own propaganda, you know it is time to assassinate them. I really wish the humans would proceed faster with the effort of doing so.

In any case, I told him that any efforts to get hold of Captain Sheridan should be directed towards Proxima III, where the good Captain was presently engaged, and wished him luck, especially considering he had managed to endear himself to the population of Proxima III to no end by his orders to shoot at them some weeks past. And then I ended the connection, told my Babcom unit I wished to record a message of my own, and started to try and find the courage to do so. I have instructed the computer to send it at once, after I have finished speaking, or else I will undoubtedly delete it again. The standby sign on the view screen blinks at me, as if to mock. Well, it is entitled to. I had sworn to myself that I would never sink this low. Clearly, I should have known better.

Very well. It is time.

Record Message. Private, to Citizen G'Kar, Tuzanor, Minbar. Unlocking code, two words: Carl Sandburg.



G'Kar -

If I were to say I hope this message finds you well, I would be lying. It should be the truth, of course. I should be happy that you have made a new life for yourself among the Anla'Shok, for there is little sense in both of us being miserable, and only a selfish man would try to interrupt this new life. I had thought I was not that selfish.

I was wrong.

Again, you will undoubtedly say, in that unbelievably presumptuous manner of yours, so let me indulge you somewhat further by confessing I was wrong about a great many things.

I believed I had resigned myself to living for my world, that I had given up my hopes of personal happiness, not because I wanted to, but because I had to. It took me a while to realize that this was as foolish as your attempt to die in a grandiose gesture of overblown heroism on that asteroid. For I cannot give up hope. Not for my people and not for myself. It might be my fate to be eternally torn in two directions, instead of directing all my emotions into one, and yet I cannot become whole by trying to surrender one of the directions.

They asked us about our idea for the perfect evening this week. First, I wanted to reply that the very concept was impossible for me, which our visit to Centauri Prime had shown. For the evening when we dined together, you, Timov, the children and myself, that evening came close and showed at the same time all the obstacles. There was my world, and there was you, and for a short while, there was a precarious balance instead of what I felt during the rest of our stay, that the two of you rejected each other like two strong poles of a magnet, which cannot be forced together if they are of the same orientation.

But then, pondering this further, I reconsidered, and thought of another evening, not on Centauri Prime, but here. When I had not attempted to force the two of you together, and when there had been no past and no future, just the present.

Once I had realized that this evening was my answer, several additional realisations followed suit, a most annoying event, I must say. Clearly, this epiphany business is not for me. You can keep it. I am not a philosopher, G'Kar, and I never will be. Nor am I a spiritual person in any sense. I can believe in certain ideals and abstract concepts, yes, but I cannot live for them alone. I need to live for those I have given my heart to, and painful as this is for both of us, this means I need to live for you, too.

Next in line of the realisations pestering me was one regarding the nature of love. Now this I had assumed to be familiar with, as indeed I had thought myself to be familiar with the loss of love. And yet when Adira left the station as a free woman, when I had found and lost her the first time, what I felt was very different. I hoped she would return to me one day, but I did not truly believe she would, and I made no attempt to force the issue. Nor did I assume that the beautiful young woman she was would live alone, though I never felt compelled to dwell on the idea of her in the arms of another. There was no urge to possess, and when she did tell me she would return, it felt like an unexpected grace.

But. Ever since you left, what I felt was anything but gentleness and resignation. We have a legend of a goddess who eats the seeds of a fruit the god of the underworld gave her, and might I add here that the god of the underworld is not the most attractive of beings for doing so? Ever after, the goddess in question could not eat the food she was used to again, though she tried. And how she tried. But she could feel herself fading away, until she acknowledged only the seeds from that world of rocks and pain would restore her to life and feeling again. Thus she was split in two, and spend half of her life in the world of her youth, and half with the god of the underworld.

But. I had known this story my entire life, and yet I had managed to miss the point. For the point was not that she had eaten, or that she was split in two, the point was what she did afterwards. That she managed to create a life for herself that allowed her to live for both that lost world full of flourishing beauty, and for the god of the underworld.

So. I will ask what may not be my right to ask, but what my heart dictates, nonetheless. I do not know how much time is left to the Regent, whether it will be weeks or months or even a year or two until he leaves us. Still, it is time, and time is precious. Every hour is precious. Perhaps by the time he dies, the change I am trying to achieve will already have started to take root. This is very unlikely, yet not completely impossible, for the universe has made an art of letting the impossible come true this recent years. Even if this will not be the case, if everything Vazini said once still will hold true at that point, it does not mean it will remain this way for the rest of my life. Who knows what a few years under a new Emperor might do? A strange thing, my life, which has brought damage to so many and much confusion to myself, but I happen to be fairly certain it will extend for almost two decades more, at least.

Delenn recently reminded me that Sheridan will die in twenty years, and asked me how the two of them could not spend what time remained together. Delenn, of course, is a wise woman, with the way women have to cut through the elaborate nets we entangle ourselves in.

So. Whatever time is left before the Regent dies, whatever time there will be in the future once Centauri Prime has started to change, whatever time I can beg or steal, I want - I wish - I yearn to give to you. I know it is not sensible, and selfish on my part. I know it is not wise and will in all likelihood result in more pain and confusion. But I also know it will bring joy as well, and it will be true, not the lie I am currently living. If you can accept this -

Of course, if you'd rather continue your new life in the present way, I have something to give to you as well. I hear the nights are cold on Minbar, and so there are some packages on the way. Just make sure that the fur capes are not confused with training equipment, they were not exactly cheap, and -

This is all nonsense. It all comes down to the reply I gave you at Vir's Day of Ascension, when you made your announcement and then proceeded to leave with your usual way of stirring up things without sitting out the consequences. You are absolutely, positively, the most impossible person in the universe, and I love you.

Come b-

Suddenly, there is a noise in the background, as if the door is opened. The recording camera of the Babcom unit shows Londo turning around in irritation.

Who are you? What do you want?

There is a subaudible, rumbling reply. Londo takes a breath, visibly bristling. Then the camera blackens out, and so does the audio recording, short-circuited. As instructed earlier, Babcom automatically sends the recorded message, including the last moment, to G'Kar.